Rendezvous on the Line when the Players' Initial Distance is Given by an Unknown Probability Distribution

• Authors: Vic Baston;Shmuel Gal
• Venue: SIAM Journal on Control and Optimization
• Year: 1998

Two players A and B are randomly placed on a line. The distribution of the distance between them is unknown except that the expected initial distance of the (two) players does not exceed some constant $\mu.$ The players can move with maximal velocity 1 and would like to meet one another as soon as possible. Most of the paper deals with the asymmetric rendezvous in which each player can use a different trajectory. We find rendezvous trajectories which are efficient against all probability distributions in the above class. (It turns out that our trajectories do not depend on the value of $\mu.$) We also obtain the minimax trajectory of player A if player B just waits for him. This trajectory oscillates with a geometrically increasing amplitude. It guarantees an expected meeting time not exceeding $6.8\mu.$ We show that, if player B also moves, then the expected meeting time can be reduced to $5.7\mu.$The expected meeting time can be further reduced if the players use mixed strategies. We show that if player B rests, then the optimal strategy of player A is a mixture of geometric trajectories. It guarantees an expected meeting time not exceeding $4.6\mu.$ This value can be reduced even more (below $4.42\mu$) if player B also moves according to a (correlated) mixed strategy. We also obtain a bound for the expected meeting time of the corresponding symmetric rendezvous problem.